The best thing about “Our Descent Into Los Angeles” is that it barely touched Clyde and Doug’s hookup game. This has been the most frustrating part of House Of Lies since it showed up in that second episode, and I was all prepared to make it the focus of this week’s review. That it was gone was refreshing, but it wasn’t also replaced by any kind of non-hideous character development for the two younger men, unless you count Doug trying find someone to go see Wicked with him.
It’s not really a good sign when the thing that works best about an episode is what’s missing instead of what’s there. Back when the pilot aired, I mentioned several different directions that the show could have gone, and included “farce” based largely on the dinner scene, which seems to be the core of House Of Lies’ mytharc at this point. With two of the characters back, April, the stripper who pretended to be Marty’s wife, and Greg, still hanging around the office being an ass, the show had enough to do it again. So, April tries to give Marty a blowjob in his office, when Greg bursts in to be a bother. Cue Marty doing whatever he can to keep his pants and prevent Greg from finding out.
Even though this is a pretty straightforward farce, House Of Lies still gets it wrong. The main reason is that it’s caught between wanting to do awkward cringe humor and wanting to do manic ridiculousness. Marty seems to be aiming for the former, Greg the latter. I tend to prefer the latter, but Greg Norbert’s half-insane characterization just rubs me the wrong way. Theoretically he’s an interesting character, theoretically this is an interesting storyline, but it’s so overdone in the part of the show that’s most naturalistic, the Galweather team/office, that it’s jarring. Nothing about this man suggests competence, let alone danger.
The worst and laziest part of it? It doesn’t end. Marty gets a call to go to his son’s school, and the scene immediately ends. The entire scene was built on the idea that he was trapped in a potentially comprimising situation from which he couldn’t extricate himself. So what happens? He gets out without us seeing how.